The Sorrow a Blight Unbearable
by Stormcrown201
Summary: Fergus and Saorla find a fatally injured Thomas Howe in the wake of another darkspawn attack, a few short months after the Fall of Highever. Together, the three grieve all that they have lost.


It was odd to think that killing darkspawn had now become routine. Saorla had never even seen a darkspawn before two months ago, but now here she was, mowing them down with the aid of her brother and their other companions. Her life could hardly have taken a more jarring or abrupt about-face if it had tried. But she knew the reason why for it all, and she didn't much want to think about it. What had happened at Highever was done, and she should leave it be until the time came for her and Fergus to confront Arl Howe, if indeed it ever did. For now, it was pointless to dwell.

Saorla picked her way through the darkspawn corpses, trying to resist the urge to wrinkle her nose. In all her life, she'd never encountered such an abominable stench. But of course, her life before had been very privileged and sheltered—the foulest smell she could recall was when one of the servants came down with a case of dysentery a couple of years ago. That was nothing in comparison to this, the odour of corpses littered over a shattered, ravaged plain. There were the corpses of men as well, and she'd be seeing them soon. For now, it was just another darkspawn party that had taken down a group of soldiers before she and her companions had taken them down in turn. As she passed by, she yanked out her arrows from the bodies and examined them, tossing away those that were now useless and returning to her quiver those that were not. Waste not, want not; ammo was always an issue.

As they got beyond the darkspawn corpses, Saorla thought she heard a gasp. She looked in the direction of it, as did Fergus and the others, but she saw nothing, and for a few moments more there was silence. Then the sound came again, a bit louder, and still again a second later, and this time, she was able to pinpoint where it was coming from. She turned around, and her eyes travelled back over the corpses and the Blighted land to see a man sitting against a log, amidst yet more carnage. His armour had been hacked to pieces, and he was covered in blood—everything from his hair to the remnants of his armour was stained with it. He gasped and groaned and clutched at his stomach, and more blood dribbled through the gaps between his fingers. He was dying, that much was plain.

But something about his black hair and hooked nose and brown eyes was familiar to her. Saorla frowned and, slowly, she began to make her way over to him, without trying to draw his attention to her. This looked like a face that she had known in her life before, but it was impossible to place where or when she had seen it with all the blood. She was a few more strides from him when Fergus suddenly grabbed her arm. Saorla looked at him.

"Did you see his shield?" Fergus asked her in a low voice. "To the left of him. He's one of Howe's."

Saorla duly looked, and there it was, a buckler displaying the bear of Amaranthine. For a moment, she was tempted to do what Fergus evidently wanted her to do and leave the man to his fate—there was nothing that they could do for him, anyway—but something still held her back. She looked from the shield to the man again, then to his armour. Upon closer examination, she recognised the materials. They were too fine for the armour of a common soldier. This was a nobleman.

Then, suddenly, she knew.

"Fergus," she said to her brother, voice equally low, "don't you recognise him? I think that's Thomas."

Fergus blinked and peered at the man, and then his eyes went wide. "Maker's cock, it is," he muttered. "Poor bastard's been slaughtered." For just a moment, there was a trace of pity in his eyes, but then it vanished, and rage and pain—and perhaps even a hint of cruel satisfaction—took its place. Saorla wondered briefly if her brother was seeing Thomas or Arl Howe lying there. "Leave him," he said brusquely. "We can't do anything for him."

Saorla was about to open her mouth to respond when a hoarse voice said, "Wait."

She glanced up. Thomas was looking in their direction, and Saorla wanted to kick herself as she realised that he must have overheard them, though they had kept their voices down. But there was no sign of accusation in the man's face, only terrible pain that twisted his once-handsome features and caused him to grimace. If she was right, there was also sorrow as well—which, naturally, made her wonder. Sorrow for what? For the premature end of his life? Or for something else entirely?

"Thomas?" she said uncertainly, well aware of Fergus' eyes boring into the back of her skull. "Thomas Howe?"

The young man groaned and shifted, more blood dribbling from the wound beneath his hand. "That's right," he gasped. "And you're Lady Saorla and Lord… no, no… _Teyrn_ Fergus." Fergus' eyebrow shot up, and Saorla blinked. Odd that one of Howe's children should be addressing her brother by his proper title, and not as Lord Fergus, as he had once been.

But she would ask something else of him. It was not a necessary question, really, but Saorla wasn't about to inquire into how he was addressing her brother while she was standing several strides away from him, barely within speaking distance. "You recognise us still?" she said.

Thomas let out a choked sort of sound that might have been a laugh. "You think my memory so bad? I know it's been a while and that… that things have _changed_ … but I remember you both." Fergus opened his mouth, but Thomas continued. "Besides, I've been… thinking of you. Will you come over here… please?"

Fergus' response was immediate and expected. "Bit audacious of you to ask anything of us after everything your father's done," he said viciously, and Thomas looked away, screwing his eyes shut—cringing? It was hard to tell. Saorla knew that she probably should be angry and upset, that she should make a scene and storm away with a dramatic declaration of her undying hatred—or that she should go and crush his throat with her foot or something equally slow and horrible while boasting, in a manner most insane, of how she would do the same to his father when she caught up with him. Others would have done as much. Fergus certainly wanted to, from the look on his face.

But Thomas was dying, and she felt only pity. She approached him and knelt next to him. After a few moments, Fergus followed, though he was obviously reluctant and remained standing. The others kept at a safe distance.

"What happened here, Thomas?" Saorla asked quietly.

Thomas sighed. "Just another darkspawn attack," he said. "My men and I were caught off-guard. I don't think anybody made it out. I played being dead until you came along—couldn't do anything else, and it won't be playing soon enough."

"Reminds me of what happened to me and my scouts in the Wilds," Fergus said, folding his arms. "Only I got lucky."

"Quite," Thomas said, and he groaned again.

"I've got a mage back there, a healer," Saorla said. She saw Fergus shoot her a disbelieving look out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored him. "Do you want me to bring her over? Have her ease your suffering?"

Thomas gave her a suspicious glance—rightly so, she supposed; no doubt he had been expecting coldness at best and a knife to his heart at worst—and shook his head. "There's no point," he said. "The pain isn't so bad, and I'll be gone soon, anyway. Have her spend her mana on something else." His tone was so insistent that Saorla saw no point in arguing.

"If you say so," she said. "I'm sorry." She saw Fergus opening his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand, and he wisely said nothing.

Thomas looked still more disbelieving. "That's supposed to be my line," he said, with weak humour. "I mean—you're being very generous, all things considered. No, I mean—" He shook his head, and Saorla's mouth twitched. She remembered Thomas as a boy and man who sometimes stumbled over the words he was trying to say, and it was both amusing and depressing that he hadn't lost that even now.

"I mean," he said, "I'm sorry as well. For Highever. Your family. I'm so sorry." He looked at her, at both of them, and his eyes were full of what Saorla judged to be genuine grief. So, that was what his hint of sorrow had been for. The twitch of her mouth turned into a real, if unhappy smile.

Fergus was not so affected. "You think an apology makes up for all this?" he asked bitterly. "For your bastard of a father and his men slaughtering our parents and my wife and son like _animals_? For killing the castle staff? For driving us out and taking over our lands? For any of that?"

"No," Thomas said, and he aimed for forcefulness but fell short of it, no doubt thanks to his weakness. "No, it doesn't. I know it doesn't really mean anything. I just—I had to tell you. I'm sorry. It should never have happened."

"Did you know what was going to happen?" Saorla asked while Fergus scoffed.

Thomas shook his head and looked pleadingly at her. "I _swear_ , I had no idea," he said. "If I had—well, nothing stops Father once he's got an idea in his head, but I would have warned you! Or the king—or someone! I swear, neither Delilah nor I wanted this to happen! We're your vassals; we're supposed to be loyal! You've never done anything to us that wasn't completely justified! This—this was… there was no good reason for it. There could never be."

Saorla nodded slowly, and she believed him at once. Thomas had always seemed a good man to her, not inclined to overambition or treachery. But then—

"Why should we believe you?" Fergus demanded. "We thought your father was trustworthy, too. We trusted him like our right hands. And look what happened!"

Thomas grimaced again. "I know," he said wearily. "I know. I can't prove that I feel this way, just as I can't prove that Father sent me to take care of Highever while he was in Denerim, and that I intended to remove our forces and end the occupation while his back was turned. That's how my men and I ended up in this ambush—we were on our way to Highever. I wanted to get us back out in the field and give up Highever, and then I wanted to take over Amaranthine… and deal with Father. Easier said than done, but I couldn't abide his actions."

Saorla's brow lifted, and she glanced at Fergus. Her brother shook his head, obviously still disbelieving, and she looked back at Thomas again, trying to process what she had heard as quickly as possible. Ultimately, she decided to trust him.

"That would have been very brave of you," she said. "Foolhardy, maybe, but brave."

"You believe him?" Fergus said suspiciously.

"Yes, Fergus," Saorla said, and her voice was firm. "Arl Howe took everything else from me except for you, but I won't let him make me into something I'm not. Someone who's paranoid and holds everyone at a distance out of fear, who refuses to trust and have _faith_ , who can only think of vengeance. I'll be better than that." Fergus looked like he wanted to disagree with her, but he nodded his understanding.

Thomas' brow lifted, presumably with surprise. "I admire your strength, my lady," he said, shifting again where he sat. The blood was trickling more slowly over his fingers now. "Most people would have been irrevocably changed by what he did. But, you know—I wanted to do the right thing and reverse his actions, and instead, I ended up here before I could even start."

"And now your father will understand what it means to lose a child," Fergus growled, and there was a sort of savage cruelty in his voice that Saorla had never heard from him before and that made her feel like she'd just had ice water thrown in her face. " _Good._ "

"Fergus!" she snapped, staring up at him in disgust. "That's _awful!_ "

"Not anywhere near as awful as what Howe's men did to Oren and Oriana," Fergus snapped back, his face full of animalistic fury. "Maybe she died first, and he got to watch his mother die while seeing a sword up close, so very close. Or maybe they tore him from her arms, and she had to _watch_ , so helpless, as they stabbed him to death before doing the same to her. While—" Here, Fergus' expression changed to something inscrutable, and he abruptly jammed his mouth shut and looked away.

Saorla waited for a moment, but when he didn't continue, she decided to not think about his silence. No doubt the answer would be unpleasant. She shook her head and looked at Thomas.

Thomas' gaze was focused on Fergus. "That would be effective if I didn't know for a fact that Father doesn't care about us except as pawns to use in his plans," he said, and his voice was faintly laced with bitterness. "This will mean _nothing_ to him, except that he's lost a valuable asset. Just the same as Mother's death meant nothing to him. Do you understand?"

Fergus looked at him, then at Saorla, who still felt as if she'd just been slapped in the face and was somewhat numb with it. There was a long pause, then her brother said, "No, I don't."

"This _is_ Arl Howe we're talking about, remember," Saorla reminded him gently.

Her brother seemed to consider her words for a moment. Then he sighed, and all the rage faded from his face, and he knelt beside her, looking at Thomas with the same pity that she had felt from the start. "I suppose so," he said. "I see what you mean."

"I'm sorry," Thomas said again, and this time, Fergus didn't protest. "It never should have happened. You all deserved better than this." By this point, the man's voice was weakening, and his eyes were half-shut, and beneath the bloodstains, his face was absolutely white. It would not be long now.

But there was still one more thing.

"Thomas," she said, and he shifted his head slightly in her direction. "Arl Howe… it doesn't matter much, in the grand scheme of things, but that evening, before the attack… he said something about you."

Thomas' eyes opened just slightly—with surprise again, maybe? "Did he?" he said, and there was a note of definite interest in his tone. "What did he say?"

Saorla looked away briefly. As she'd said, it really didn't matter, and it was rather pointless to be talking about it now. She wasn't even sure why she was. Perhaps it was that broken part of her that she was fighting to not let overtake her, the inevitable part that was constantly mourning everything that she had lost—all that she had had and all that she could have had, too—the part that she tried to ignore most of the time but occasionally indulged so that it didn't drive her mad. Regardless, here they were.

"He said that you were asking after me," she said. Her cheeks burned faintly red, the more so when Fergus looked askance at her and Thomas' eyebrows lifted once again. "He suggested that he should bring you with him next time—a lie, of course, but—I said I would like that. And _he_ said that you saw me at a fair in Denerim and, um, had talked about me ever since. That you'd be glad that I remembered you." Her gaze dropped as she spoke, and her fingers clenched on the cloth of her armour as her cheeks grew even hotter. Looking briefly up again, she could see that Thomas was also blushing slightly, though it was close to imperceptible with how much blood he'd already lost.

"I don't know why I'm saying this, I just—well, was all of that a lie as well?" Saorla finally asked, and next to her, Fergus relaxed as he seemed to grasp what she was getting at.

Thomas' mouth twitched, but so slightly that Saorla couldn't tell whether he was smiling or grimacing or what. "No, that wasn't a lie," he said frankly—maybe even a little bashfully. It would have been sweet if he hadn't been so thoroughly soaked in blood; as it was, Saorla only felt a sharp pang of regret and stared at him with ever more pity.

He caught her gaze and held it. "I _was_ asking after you, and I—I _am_ glad that you remembered me," he said. Yet again, he groaned, and his chest rose and fell slowly with his shallow, ragged breaths. A second time, Saorla wondered if she should bring Wynne over regardless of Thomas' objections, but she restrained herself. She would respect his wishes. After a moment, Thomas continued, "Father… suspected that Nathaniel might not be coming back from the Free Marches. Which meant that I would be his heir. So he wanted me to find someone. I wanted…" He looked up at her, and everything that he couldn't say was there in those brown eyes.

Saorla waited.

"It would have been nice, wouldn't it?" Thomas said regretfully. "You and me, Lady Saorla? We could have worked, yes? We could have been happy, had children. You could have been Arlessa alongside me when Father died. Our families could have been joined together as they haven't been for generations. We could have…"

She sighed and bowed her head, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Fergus looked about as miserable as she now felt. "Yes," she said, almost breathing the word. "It would have been nice. We could have worked. It would have been everything I'd ever wanted." Of course, she did not mention that she'd been considering Dairren as well—poor Dairren—or that there was another man right now who had her attention. She didn't want to make him feel any worse.

She tried to imagine it. A future with him, in Amaranthine: a lovely place, certainly. The chance to be both Arlessa and a mother, to manage an arling and its court while also bearing and raising children, children who would be happy and grow up to be good people (she hoped), who would have a loving family and the whole world before them, just like she'd had. A chance, as well, to be happy in her marriage. She and Thomas had never known each other very well, but she'd liked him, and he'd felt something more for her, that was plain. With time, it could have worked.

But it was all ash, just as everything else was. There was nothing left there but a hollow void that filled her with an uncomfortable longing, one that could never be satisfied. Yes, it _could have_ been—but there were no words more terrible than _could have_. And while she may have truly lost those dreams when she joined the Grey Wardens, it was because of Howe that she'd had to join them in the first place. The blame ultimately could be traced back to him.

And it was not just her who had lost her dreams and everything else. It was Fergus, too, and the survivors of the attack, and those in Highever who'd had family and friends in the castle.

And Thomas.

Saorla looked at him again, stared at him still more pityingly than she had before, and Thomas looked back with the expression mirrored in his eyes, along with so much sorrow for what they had both lost. How did the song go? Ah, yes— _'I am the one who can recount what we've lost. I am the one who will live on.'_ It wasn't entirely applicable to this situation, but it struck a chord with Saorla nevertheless.

"Well, what do you know," Fergus said, and while his voice was bitter, Saorla could tell that it wasn't directed at Thomas this time, "we all lost so much from this. Damn your father. He's lost us all everything."

"That he has," Thomas said. He was almost whispering, so that they both had to lean in to hear his words. "All for his petty ambition. Maker's blood. So much that could have been…" He sighed, though the sound was close to imperceptible. "At least you two will get another chance if you survive."

"And that's why I intend to survive," Saorla said.

"Good," Thomas said. "Show Father you've only got stronger. Give him what he deserves. Make it—" Still another groan. "Make his 'victory' _meaningless_."

"Oh, we will," Fergus said. This time, his voice was only firm, rather than angry and cutting. Considering how he'd been at the outset of this conversation, that was something.

Thomas nodded. His hand dropped into his lap.

Unbidden, Saorla leant over and grabbed it, lacing the fingers tightly together. His were deathly cold.

Thomas looked at her and smiled a final time. His eyes were almost closed, but there was still everything that he could no longer say in them, and she nodded like he'd just spoken. She tried to ignore the wetness in her own eyes.

 _He's only seventeen. He deserved better than this._

"Thank you. I'm sorry," he said, and died.

For a long moment afterwards, Saorla still gazed at him, watching the last of the blood drain from his face as his head slumped into his shoulder. His fingers went loose, and she gently pulled hers free as she shivered, feeling number than ever. She glanced at Fergus, just quickly, and saw that there was no satisfaction or cruelty in his face now, only sympathy and grief. "Poor bastard," he muttered again.

"We should give him a pyre," Saorla said quietly. She wished she could do the same for all the others, but there simply wasn't time, nor was there much wood to spare in the area. They would have to settle for burning Thomas alone. If nothing else, burning Thomas showed that they were better than Arl Howe—Saorla had no doubt that he hadn't shown the same respect to the bodies of her parents, Oriana, or Oren, something that she would prefer not to think about.

Fergus nodded silently and got to his feet, heading in the direction of the nearest tree as Saorla returned to their companions to explain what was happening and get their help. They didn't have any axes, but between Wynne and Morrigan's magic and Alistair, Fergus, and Sten's swords, they were soon able to gather together a decent amount of wood and construct a pyre. Saorla laid Thomas on it as he was—again, there was no time to properly prepare him—and, with Fergus' aid, got the fire going.

Slowly, the flames licked higher and higher, gradually surrounding Thomas' body. She could feel the heat from where she stood, but she felt numb and hollowed out still. As Thomas and everything that he had represented and everything that could have been were consumed by the flames, she found that there was nothing more to say. It was done, and she should leave it be.

What else was there to this?


End file.
